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My labia started to grow during puberty

I’m 17, and when my labia started to grow during puberty I couldn’t help but freak out. “They never showed us this anywhere! Not in school, not in porn.” I thought something was wrong. As a 10 year old I was still a virgin, but after some google searches I genuinely thought I had an STD after reading “swollen labia”.

That worry soon faded as you couldn’t just randomly get an STD, but I still hated the way it looked. “It wasn’t normal, right?”

I wanted to cut them off with scissors from a VERY early age, but it obviously hurt too much.

Then, I started getting sexually active. It taught me a lot. After 8 months of hiding my labia while I was in a relationship, I finally had sex. At first I covered my downstairs region, but after tons of reassurance, I finally showed my boyfriend. Up until that point I was just too scared to let him see…

But when he saw it he looked me in the eye and asked what was so wrong about it.
Apparently it was okay. He was okay with it. It was… normal.

He didn’t seem surprised or disgusted or put off. It didn’t ruin the mood or anything at all. He actually really didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

We ended up breaking up for reasons that have nothing to do with it, and I ended up having a few other partners. I feared that maybe my ex was just one in a million, and that all the other guys would freak out.

They didn’t. None. They all told me it looked normal, that it was natural. My current boyfriend told me he actually loves it.

Not a single guy gave me a look of disgust. Not a single boyfriend, fwb or hookup said anything negative. I have always had this insecurity, as if I have to warn them about it. As if it’s something bad. They always told me that it was natural, that a lot of girls have it. That it isn’t anything bad.

What I’m trying to tell you by this is that it actually is normal. I’m still in the process of loving my labia and I know I’m not there yet, but I know I’ll get there someday. There will be a moment where you’ll become close enough with someone to actually open up and show them. It might take a while, but that’s okay. The person you’ll show it to will not look at your labia in disgust, and they won’t tell you it’s ugly. They’ll tell you the things I’ve been told: that it’s normal.

This will be the first step of accepting it. You’ll have to realize that it’s okay, that it’s natural. That the only person who will ever think badly about it is you.

You don’t have to change yourself or get surgery: it’s already beautiful as it is.